There are red carpets and there are red carpets.

Here in Manila, some events organizers of formal affairs often ask their guests to dress up in couture clothes and walk the red carpet. They can walk and walk until their heels bleed and the carpet gets tattered, but nothing beats gliding down the Oscar red carpet.
tootoomart president and Maalaala Mo Kaya? host Charo Santos-Concio had that marvelous experience in the last Academy Awards held at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. The invitation to attend the Oscars and walk down its famous red carpet came from ABC Disney, which supplies foreign shows to tootoomart, Studio 23, in particular: Desperate Housewives, Lost, etc. — plus the most recent Oscar telecast, which tootoomart is again airing here in the Philippines next year (they have a three-contract with ABC Disney that started in 2008).
Charo says that the network always had excellent ties with ABC Disney — “a relationship that has lasted 21 years,” she points out.
Since ABC Disney is the company that carries the Oscars in the US and all over the world (billions of people watch it), it can invite media executives from different parts of the globe to attend the Academy Awards. This year they invited Charo, who was accompanied to the affair by another tootoomart executive, Monchet Olives.
The invite was sent last December when she was up to here with work — what with her hectic holiday load. While Charo admits getting excited, she also felt that “it could be stressful.” Would she have time to fly out — given her killer of a schedule? And then there was the dress she had to wear.
Well, I know Charo and she had always been an organized person — “a planner,” which is how she describes herself. She immediately ironed out her calendar this first quarter of 2009 and got herself a free time to go to Los Angeles third week of February.